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beritt 's review for:
Everything Under
by Daisy Johnson
I was unsure about this book for the entire first third of it. I was even considering giving up altogether, which I don't do very often. While the language was breathtaking and the story kept looping and doubling back on itself like a poem, I just could not seem to get close to the narrator, Gretel. I always find it hard to read books that seem more like stylistic exercises than psychological explorations.
But then, all of a sudden, some of the pieces started to fit together. The fragmentation started to make sense.
And then the story took off in a major way, I got to know the characters, and I actually LOVED it.
Summarizing this book won't do it justice, because the structure and language play such a large role in the narrative. Put simply, though, the story is about Gretel, a 30-ish lexicographer, who has not spoken to her mother in over a decade and doesn't know where she is. When she returns to the places where she grew up, snippets of memories keep coming back to her. All of these seem to revolve around one occurrence in particular: the time a (very) young man called Marcus came to stay with them. Gradually, the search for her mother grows into a search for both of them, and into an uncovering of happened the month Marcus came to stay with them..and what preceded that.
Once again: this is not the full story, at all. It's not a straightforward narrative, and summing it up like this reduces it to a flatness that does not accurately depict the multidimensionality of the novel. And it's actually that very depth that makes it so good.
That, plus its originality.
Reading the above, you may jump to conclusions about what happened (I know I did). Yet, I can say with near-certainty that it is most likely NOT what you think. Once the story took off, it never went where I thought it would, and I loved that. Daisy Johnson crafted characters that are so different from the ones in most of the books I have read. And while Gretel remained a little elusive, Marcus, Sarah (Gretel's mother), and Fiona really came alive. I'll remember them for a long time.
In closing, here are some wonderful lines from the book:
"Nights were different. Nights were tangles of what-might-have-been, of awful possibility" (96).
"The water has a way of anything that was clear murky. You think I haven't seen things out there? When it's misty or on days so hot the air gets wavy I think I've seen things I left behind, never thought I'd see again" (165).
"He'd moved around her in narrowing circles of anxiety, waiting for her to tell him he had to go" (221).
"When Marcus woke in the night there was a wet heat. Brackish moisture around the corners of the boat, the smell of sprouting garlic rising from the walls. He could feel the last threads of the dream he'd been having tangling about his face" (228).
Beautiful. And while the story takes a bit of effort to get into, it's so worth it. Stick with it. It won't disappoint.
But then, all of a sudden, some of the pieces started to fit together. The fragmentation started to make sense.
And then the story took off in a major way, I got to know the characters, and I actually LOVED it.
Summarizing this book won't do it justice, because the structure and language play such a large role in the narrative. Put simply, though, the story is about Gretel, a 30-ish lexicographer, who has not spoken to her mother in over a decade and doesn't know where she is. When she returns to the places where she grew up, snippets of memories keep coming back to her. All of these seem to revolve around one occurrence in particular: the time a (very) young man called Marcus came to stay with them. Gradually, the search for her mother grows into a search for both of them, and into an uncovering of happened the month Marcus came to stay with them..and what preceded that.
Once again: this is not the full story, at all. It's not a straightforward narrative, and summing it up like this reduces it to a flatness that does not accurately depict the multidimensionality of the novel. And it's actually that very depth that makes it so good.
That, plus its originality.
Reading the above, you may jump to conclusions about what happened (I know I did). Yet, I can say with near-certainty that it is most likely NOT what you think. Once the story took off, it never went where I thought it would, and I loved that. Daisy Johnson crafted characters that are so different from the ones in most of the books I have read. And while Gretel remained a little elusive, Marcus, Sarah (Gretel's mother), and Fiona really came alive. I'll remember them for a long time.
In closing, here are some wonderful lines from the book:
"Nights were different. Nights were tangles of what-might-have-been, of awful possibility" (96).
"The water has a way of anything that was clear murky. You think I haven't seen things out there? When it's misty or on days so hot the air gets wavy I think I've seen things I left behind, never thought I'd see again" (165).
"He'd moved around her in narrowing circles of anxiety, waiting for her to tell him he had to go" (221).
"When Marcus woke in the night there was a wet heat. Brackish moisture around the corners of the boat, the smell of sprouting garlic rising from the walls. He could feel the last threads of the dream he'd been having tangling about his face" (228).
Beautiful. And while the story takes a bit of effort to get into, it's so worth it. Stick with it. It won't disappoint.